It’s the worst entry-level job market in a generation. The unemployment rate for recent college graduates is higher than the national rate by the largest gap on record. For the first time, trade school grads are on average making more money than college degree holders. Is it any wonder that 60 percent of graduating seniors this year feel pessimistic about their career prospects?
But members of Dartmouth’s class of ’26 have a resource that walked in their shoes not long ago: the class of ’25. Last year’s College grads have spent nearly a year weathering the job market, and more than seven in 10 have full-time jobs, according to the Office of Institutional Research’s first-outcomes survey; most of the rest are continuing their education. Only 3.5 percent are either unemployed or only working part time. About 14 percent did not respond to the survey.
DAM talked with three ’25s who’ve fought for entry-level positions in especially challenging fields—publishing, computer programming, and software engineering. Here’s the advice they had for this year’s graduates.
Be Patient, You’re Already Behind.
Almost a year after graduating as a salutatorian, Serena Suson ’25 did not think she’d still be cloistered in the suburban Milwaukee home of her parents.
She’s done the legwork to land a job in her chosen field, publishing: 125 applications, 29 unsuccessful interviews, and two unpaid internships. But she still has no paid work. “Failure and stagnancy feel very real,” she says from her parents’ kitchen.
To be sure, Dartmouth grads do much better than most college grads when it comes to finding work. Although the Office of Institutional Research survey found little unemployment among last year’s grads, the survey may not capture the underemployment of alumni such as Suson, who is working her second unpaid internship, says Joe Catrino, the Center for Career Design executive director. In other words, the job market can be tough even with a Big Green degree.
Suson says she spends about eight hours researching and tailoring each application to an employer and has built up an “armor of indifference” to rejection. Getting turned down in the latter stages of the interview process still stings, but it quickly heals. The job hunt feels as though “you are constantly throwing pieces of cooked spaghetti at the wall, and your arms are getting tired.” She’s only half joking. “But you just have to keep doing it.”
At Dartmouth, where she majored in English modified with classical languages, Suson went from success to success. She received six academic citations of excellence, won the top award in ancient Greek twice, wrote an honors thesis about English Renaissance epics, interned with Open Door Legal, and was the writing executive of the feminist literary magazine Spare Rib.
Professors told Suson that she was one of the “best students they ever had,” she says. At her last publishing internship—four months part time at Nancy Yost Literary Agency—Suson’s supervisor, Sarah Younger, told her that she does “some of the best editorial critique I’ve ever seen” and would be “perfect as an editor at a publishing house.”
“Then where’s the damn position?!” Suson says, again half joking. Even Younger can’t say why the “extraordinarily talented” Suson hasn’t gotten an offer—“or several”—yet.
Part of the problem is Suson’s field. Jobs in publishing have declined by 40 percent since the 1990s, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As newspapers and magazines disappear, candidates compete for fewer jobs. Months into this competition, Suson concluded she didn’t focus early enough on preparing for a publishing career.
After spending high school pushing herself to do “things I didn’t want to do so I could go to a good college,” Suson says she decided to take her first year at Dartmouth for “self-actualization.” She did the classes and activities she liked the most and had one of the best years of her life.
But now, after making it through several multi-round interview processes only to lose out to more experienced candidates, she doubts there’s time for self-actualization in college today. “It’s really heartbreaking,” she says, but today’s graduates need to know “you have to start grinding now. You’re already behind.” Suson believes it takes two to three internships to land an entry-level publishing position, something she didn’t realize until after graduation, believing instead that good grades, the Dartmouth name, the alumni network, and some experience would land her a job in her field of choice.
Rejection is redirection. The real world is a very beautiful place, and you shouldn’t be scared of it.”
—Serena Suson
Suson believes the Center for Career Design should do more to help grads understand the qualifications needed for a broader range of industries. Too often, she says, the career office perpetuates a “pipeline to finance.”
Catrino says many students default to finance, consulting, and banking “because recruitment is right there, it’s very easy, it’s lucrative, other people are doing it.” Nearly 40 percent of the class of ’25 went into one of these fields. But Catrino, who started at the center last year, is “trying to blow that up,” he says, and broaden students’ sense of the professional possibilities. Catrino has created “career communities” that employ professional coaches specializing in fields such as media, the arts, STEM, and business.
Suson advises the class of ’26 to approach the job search with patience—and with expectations firmly lowered.
Even when employers ask you for references after three rounds of interviews, it does not mean you got the job, she says. Suson has noticed on LinkedIn that it can take up to three years for Dartmouth grads to get a full-time position in publishing—time she refers to as “Sisyphean hell.” You have to be “working your ass off,” she says.
But Suson’s experience hasn’t been all bad. She has done serious reflection, seen her volunteer work help others, and had relationships grow in ways they couldn’t during college. “Rejection is redirection,” Suson says. Although you might begin to wonder if you peaked in college, “the real world is a very beautiful place, and you shouldn’t be scared of it.”
Do Art and Go Outside
On a December afternoon on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Liza Tatishev ’25 says she’s grown used to working alongside people sporting company logos such as Google and Two Sigma, the New York City-based hedge fund. She majored in computer science modified with neuroscience, though these days she uses that education as a barista for tech and finance workers.
With her savings slowly draining as she tries to secure something in tech, the New York native took a job at Green Lane Coffee and moved back with her parents in New Jersey.
The barista position itself was surprisingly difficult to get, but with years of experience at Dartmouth’s Novack Café and Hanover’s Still North, she was able to land it.
At Dartmouth, Tatishev was a budding research scientist. She researched reward behavior in mice with the psychological and brain sciences department, coauthored a scientific paper that used AI to study pathology during a research assistantship at Geisel, helped a professor examine how AI can interpret and categorize art, and spent a summer as a plant-breeding data intern at the California headquarters of berry company Driscoll’s.
Tatishev might have landed a professional job at Driscoll’s, which invited her to apply, but didn’t enjoy the work. Instead, she stayed in New York and applied for lots of jobs—170 since her senior winter. The positions range from data science intern to healthcare survey assistant in an ever-expanding geographic radius.
Tatishev initially wanted to work in computer programming, but the competition was tough in a field where the number of jobs has dropped to its lowest level since 1980, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. She recently pivoted toward computer research in biotech, a field that is growing faster than most but typically requires a master’s degree.
So far, she has interviewed at just five companies, but the coders who patronize Tatishev’s coffee shop are often surprised she has gotten that many. These tech workers tell her their companies aren’t hiring and the industry is “oversaturated,” she says. It’s disheartening. Tatishev once believed a computer science degree would be enough to land an industry job.
Like Suson, Tatishev keeps a spreadsheet of the applications she’s sent out. Fifty-nine are marked with a red tile, indicating the 34.7 percent of employers who have rejected her. Most of the others have not responded. She got close a few times, sometimes going through as many as five rounds of interviews, but the result was the same.
All these rejections have started to do a number on her psyche. “The biggest consequence of putting yourself out there and getting rejected is that you start to wonder if it’s a ‘you’ problem,” she says. “It’s so easy for me to feel like, if I don’t have a job, I should perhaps spend less time with friends. It’s kind of this feeling of guilt where you’re like, ‘Okay, I need to hunker down and only apply to jobs.’ ”
The Tough Economy for New Grads
5.6%: Unemployment rate, nearly twice the rate for grads of all ages*
42% Work in fields that don’t normally require a degree, the highest since 2020*
242: Average number of applicants for every job posting, nearly triple the number in 2017**
6%: Entry-level jobs that require no previous experience, underscoring the importance of internships***
Sources: *The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates, Federal Reserve Bank of New York; **Greenhouse hiring software provider; ***Launching a Tech Hiring Revolution, Generation, a youth employment nonprofit
But after months of single-mindedly looking for work, Tatishev felt she was losing her health and sense of purpose. “I feel that’s a recipe for feeling unsatisfied,” she says. Tatishev advises graduates to devote time to things they’re “able to gain meaning from” beyond looking for work, “whether that’s art or a personal project or helping other people in your life.”
She babysits her sister’s newborn once a week, picked up journaling and yoga again, and continues to do printmaking, a skill she discovered in an art class her senior year. “Spending time with your friends and family is just as important,” she says. These activities can help “ground you, and you feel rejuvenated to get back to the process.”
Tatishev believes even the coffee shop job has given her something valuable. It takes her out of her apartment—and her head, she says. It’s also been a kind of orientation into corporate America.
Some customers “don’t treat you like a person,” she admits, but the Upper West Side crowd—many working their first jobs in tech or finance—has become a valuable network. Their conversations have taught Tatishev where best to direct her energy, giving her hope for the future. She recommends the class of ’26 start networking now.
Catrino couldn’t agree more. He advises students to find and establish some rapport with alumni doing what they want—and suggests asking: “Are there other people you think I should talk to in and around this field?” It’s crucial to “get in front of decision makers” who can help you get jobs, he says.
Tatishev encourages new graduates to know their worth outside of professional success. Knowing yourself, what you authentically want, and why you want it can also help you make more informed decisions about where to apply, who to talk to, and when to pivot.
Ultimately, with what she’s learned since graduation, Tatishev says she is “optimistic that it will work out in the end.”
It All Changes When You Get a Job
Nikhil Pande ’25 saw the warning signs of a tight job market when he had difficulty securing internships during his junior year. So, the math and computer science major began sending applications for full-time positions almost a year before graduation. He put in for about 80 jobs and landed a dozen interviews before he was able to get a software engineering position at Bloomberg, the global business news service.
“Starting a little bit early is helpful because there are fewer people who have applied and they’re interviewing,” he says. “The bar is usually slightly lower, they’re more likely to give you an interview, and they still have a lot of spots open.”
During his freshman summer, Pande did a public policy internship with the Rockefeller Center in D.C., where he learned he did not enjoy that type of work. Then, he did software engineering internships at a San Francisco startup and Bridgestone Tires in Nashville, Tennessee.
Having multiple professional experiences “makes you stand out a little more,” Pande says. And although he has “no idea what happens behind the scenes with these companies” during the search process, he has noticed many current colleagues also have several internships under their belts.
Catrino says internships are increasingly important because the professional world is putting more emphasis on skills as opposed to titles. He urges new graduates to clearly articulate their skills in both their elevator pitch and resume. He also says they need to cultivate an entrepreneurial spirit in an increasingly gig-based economy—for example, by taking project-based positions that could turn long-term. For this kind of work, it’s crucial to have a portfolio “to demonstrate your skills and the things you’ve accomplished,” Catrino says.
Anya Roodnitsky ’25 sent out 300 job applications and then made an Instagram video about the tough hiring process, which went viral. It ultimately helped her secure a job with a solar energy company.
Students and alumni can create a Dartmouth-hosted personal website at journeys.dartmouth.edu to make interactive portfolios, as Suson and Tatishev have done.
Pande says he had his share of struggles during the job search—worrying he wasn’t doing enough, being ghosted by employers, and enduring constant pressure. But when he got the offer at Bloomberg, Pande says those questions went “out the window” and he felt validated that he’d worked hard enough. He now believes the job search process is more forgiving than he thought—after all, you need only one offer. “Realistically, you can screw up a lot of stuff and still get a job,” Pande says, “but in the moment it doesn’t feel like that.”
Today, Pande says his questions center not on offers but on how well he’s doing at work and whether he feels excitement or dread on Sunday afternoons.
Lukas Dunford reported for six months at the Valley News in West Lebanon, New Hampshire, but questioned whether journalism was “the right fit.” He is now seeing parts of the world before returning to the job hunt, prepared to throw spaghetti at the wall and, he hopes, settle into a career.
